The Tigers Come At Night

It was fully dark by the time they got the fire going well.  The tents were up and Jo started to cook.  They feasted on overcooked sausages wrapped in buttered bread and worked on the beer.  When Jo was finished, she went into the bushes to take care of business, using her pen light to look for poison ivy.  They had started when she came back.  She never knew whose idea it was to start telling the stories but right away she felt wrong about it.  Danni was telling a ghost story when Jo sat down, holding her torch under her chin and grinning.  She had loved to be the centre of attention since she was a child, but no one resented it.  Danni’s place was naturally in the sun. 

When she finished, everyone laughed, shuddering.  Danni passed the torch to Pete and let her fingers touch his as he took it.  Jo didn’t miss the look between them.  She had an idea she would be sleeping on her own tonight.  The thought of being alone in the tent made her feel cold but she didn’t mind about them really.  It was years since Pete had been her boyfriend. 

He told a werewolf tale, growling at all the right places.  Danni grabbed his arm at the scary parts and he slung his arm around her shoulders and somehow forgot to let go. 

Gray was next.  Jo had heard the story before but she shivered anyway.  She wanted to look over her shoulder.  She felt like something was watching her from the darkness outside the circle of the firelight.  She liked Gray well enough but when he tried to hold her hand as he gave her the torch, she carefully avoided his touch. 

Then it was her turn.  She had only one story to tell and she didn’t want to tell it. 

‘Go on, Jo,’ Danni said. 

Jo looked up.  They were all staring at her and their eyes looked yellow in the light.  She tilted the torch up under her chin and looked into the darkness beyond Pete’s shoulder. 

‘When I was seven, I saw a tiger.  The circus was in town and my dad brought me.  It was the last thing we did before he died.  The circus was great.  It smelled different than anything else, all animals and sawdust and candy but the smells all went together and became something that meant the circus.  I was so excited.  My dad held my hand and I kept trying to pull away to look at things.  I remember that a lot, me trying to pull away from him. 

‘The show was great.  There were three rings and I didn’t know where to look, there was so much going on.  There were trapeze artists and horses and clowns.  I was eating cotton candy and it was sticking to my face.  Dad was laughing at the clowns and it was really fun. 

‘Then they brought out the tigers.  There were three of them, two normal ones and a white one.  The white one was the biggest.  They did tricks and even I could see that they didn’t want to.  They were snarling at the trainer and lashing out at him but the white one was the scariest.  You could tell that it wanted to kill the man but he just kept going, cracking his whip and making them do things.  I saw a little kid, smaller than me, down in front, crying.  There were big fat tears rolling down his face and he had gone red.  But he wasn’t making any noise.  I think he was afraid to in case the tigers looked at him. 

‘It was almost over.  The man was making the two normal tigers circle around him and he took his attention away from the white one for a second.  It didn’t make a sound; it just leapt at him straight away as if it had been waiting for its chance.  Its paws hit his shoulders and it took his head in its mouth.  Everyone screamed and the other tigers crouched down, snarling, afraid of the noise or the white tiger, I’m not sure which. 

‘My dad tried to turn me away and get me out of there but I saw it.  I saw everything because it was so fast.

The white tiger tore the man’s head off and his blood coloured its white face. 

‘We ran for the exit then with all the other people, a lot of them screaming and crying.  I heard later that they shot that tiger and the other ones too.’

Jo stopped talking and looked at the others.  Gary muttered something and looked away from her.  Danni rubbed Jo’s arm with her free hand.  The other hand was resting on Pete’s thigh. 

‘Great story, Jo.  Gross, but great.  Are there any more beers?’ Pete said. 

Jo got up and went to her tent.  She hunkered down to get another six pack and saw something move between the trees.  It had been a long time since she had seen the tiger.  Dr. Bloom had helped her to not see it anymore.  She knew telling the story might bring back something unpleasant.  She would just have to deal with it.  She stood up with the beer and turned her back on the image in the trees.

She drank more than she wanted.  She couldn’t let go enough to feel as drunk as the others but when they all stood up to go to their tents, she felt like she was floating.  Danni gave Gray a quick hug and lingered over the one she gave Pete.  Jo got into the tent and crawled into her sleeping bag.  When Danni came in Jo pretended to be asleep.

After about an hour of staring at the roof of the tent, Jo heard Danni start to move.  She left the tent and Jo lay still.  Her imagination was playing images on the canvas.  She squeezed her eyes tight shut against the memory of the tiger’s face covered in blood. 

Then Danni screamed.  Jo heard Pete shouting, his voice high.  He made a gargling noise and then silence fell.  Jo sat up and stared at the tiny gap in the tent.  After a moment, in the light from the fire’s embers, she saw the white paws pass the gap.  She stopped breathing.  She heard Gray’s voice and heard him struggle out of his tent.  He was swearing but then he stopped.  He didn’t have time to scream when it took him, but Jo heard his bones crunch. 

She was frozen.  She sat in her sleeping bag and waited for it to come for her.  All the affirmations that Dr. Bloom had taught her were useless.  The tiger was here.  She heard it dragging Gary’s body towards her tent.  It dropped him outside and his head flopped sideways.  His eyes were open and staring at Jo.  The tiger lay across him and began to eat.  Sometimes, it turned its head sideways and looked at Jo.  She knew she was crying but like the little boy, she was silent. 

When it had eaten its fill, it put its huge head down and went to sleep.  Jo wasn’t aware of sleeping but she woke up lying crooked in the tent, freezing.  She sat up slowly and looked at the gap.  Gary was there but the tiger was gone.  She slipped out through the gap, trying to look everywhere at once.  Her eyes felt like they were straining out of her head. 

There was no tiger.  Instead, there were the bodies of her friends, strewn about the campsite.  Dr. Bloom’s words came back to her, repeating over and over, there is no tiger, there is no tiger.  Jo looked at her red hands and remembered the weight of the knife and her father’s bloody face on his pillow.  She started to scream and didn’t stop even when they found her.